News

Guardian article on a report by Major Flynn [and others] which basically says intelligence is missing the wood for the trees. Trying to spot insurgent cells rather than identify local powerbrokers. report published by Centre for a New american Security http://www.cnas.org/
the full report is downloadable from here:
Fixing Intel: a Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan: http://www.cnas.org/node/3924

The brothers ran the Sinaloa cartel. One, Mario, is still free. Alfredo is in jail, Arturo is now dead and Carlos is the one who has just been arrested. I just hope they have a plan to deal with the inevitable turf war that will follow the dismantling of the cartel.

Curious article which gives lots of names but then gets contradictory. It starts with 200 Al Q members, but later, 2,000 Yemenis who have returned from fighting in iraq turn up and in the next paragraph 200,000 Somali refugees. The leadership is staffed by escapees from a high security priso, but then it turns out only 3 survived. Then other leaders turn up who have been released from Guantanamo, but then they turn out to have been released to a Saudi rehabilitation programme from which they “disappeared”. How much of this group [200 is far too many for a “cell”] are Saudis and how many yemenis? there are hints of a leadership dispute. Typical of the New York Times of late. It cant make up its mind whether its a serious newspaper or a tabloid.